


A Man Under God's Grace

by Arrestzelle



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rosenrot, Flogging, Gen, Punishment, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23331013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrestzelle/pseuds/Arrestzelle
Summary: Paul repents through every strike of Father Lorenz's flogger.
Relationships: Paul Landers/Christian Lorenz
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21





	A Man Under God's Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fouroux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fouroux/gifts).



> I was talking with Inchy about Paul getting flogged by Flake as per Rosenrot, so I wrote this very quickly to get it out of my head. Lowkey inspired by In Namen Des Herren? Originally Paul was going to get a boner from it but I was too lazy to write that in.

The cloth falls from his torso in a departing caress. The biting chill of the evening attacks his skin warmed by layers. He shudders. Fire crackles nearby. The hoot of an owl. Paul sweeps his gaze along the border of the clearing in the center of the village. His fellow priests, his brothers, all watch with solemnly folded hands and varying degrees of wariness in their eyes. Schneider watches motionlessly, stone on his face, his eyes piercing. Paul wagers he had been waiting for this moment.

Lorenz is standing on the other side of the wooden beam, waiting. He has rope in his hands, his heavy, wise eyes trained on him. Paul shakes his arms out, shedding the weight of his fear and apprehension. Resolved, he steps closer, the grass rustling under his boots, and brings his arms around the pillar. Lorenz is deft and swift in fastening his wrists together with the rope—Paul stares off into the distance, finding himself focusing on the feeling of worn, warm skin touching his wrists, the grip of stern fingers.

“Do you repent?” Lorenz murmurs to him, hidden under the snapping of the fire, those intense blue eyes searching in his, “Do you wish to be absolved?”

Paul takes in a shuddering breath. He stands awkwardly against the pillar, absentmindedly curling his fingers in towards the rope around his wrists. He stares into his mentor’s patient eyes, taking in another slow, deep breath.

“I seek forgiveness,” Paul answers quietly, lowering his gaze respectfully, “For I have done many wrong. I have made sins against God and what He expects of me.”

“I shall absolve you,” Lorenz replies, stepping around both Paul and the beam, “As a child of the Lord, you will be reminded of the path you have sworn to take. Straying is unacceptable.”

Paul hears him shed the cloth from the twine flogger. Paul takes in a breath, closing his eyes. He rests his forehead to the beam.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I will graciously accept the punishment you deem fit. Relieve me of the sins I have bestowed upon myself.”

“In time,” Lorenz answers. Paul adjusts his footing, taking in another slow, final breath. A shift of position. The rustle of grass underfoot. Paul tenses up. The first strike comes. It blows across the center of his shoulder blades, following his spine. Paul gasps sharply, but manages to control his flinch. He digs his nails into the wood of the beam. The fire licks across his skin. But they are only beginning. Adrenaline shoots through his veins. His heart is racing.

The strikes continue, without reprieve. A cock of an arm, and a swing of the flogger that licks across his shoulders, and upper to mid back. It leaves behind the agonizing burn he’s grown familiar with. He grits his teeth hard with each connection, his eyes tightly wrung shut, his lips pulled back in a grimace. It hurts, but it also brings an unusual calm to his mind. The fog of his existence dissipates, and he can see his purpose once more. His purpose to serve Him. To honor Him as he should. He can feel the sins of his human nature strip away, as if struck away from his skin with every whip of the flogger.

The crack of it laying across his trembling, steaming skin fills the deathly silence of the night. His fellow priests watch in silence. Paul’s grunts of pain are beginning to pierce through his self-control. His mind struggles to latch onto that resolve, that drive to do what must be done.

Fifteen strikes in, Paul is slumping against the beam, clutching at it with shaking arms, fingers whitened by his grip around the pillar. He’s gasping and groaning in pain following every sweep of the twine flogger along abused, raw skin. It pulls apart his muscles, ripping away his flesh to expose the skeletal truth of him. The true sin of his existence. That he is wrought with imperfection, that he will continue to do so as long as he exists as a man under God’s grace. He can only scream now, head rising and falling in agony as Lorenz strikes him again and again along the reddened, howling flesh of his sizzling back. His legs and arms are trembling.

Incoherence replaces any rational thought. He’s gasping and moaning in pain following every hit of the tool. It’s become numb now. His nerves have simmered in the white-hot pain for so long, it’s progressed into a white noise of nothingness. The screams of pain seemed to have regressed into weaker, soft groans with every lash of the whip. Only after the skin breaks and the blood flows does Paul lose his footing, collapsing against the beam, only to slump down to the ground. It displays his weakness, unable to make it to the end, but has he ever been anything but weak?

Steam rises from his open wounds. Paul hears the distant sound of soft footsteps.

“Thirty-six lashes,” Lorenz’s low voice joins the sound of Paul’s hitching, heaving breaths, “You have bled for Him. I deem you absolved.”

Paul sees the bloody flogger in his peripheral vision when Lorenz steps around his slumped form, standing over him. It’s gripped almost loosely in that big hand. Paul tiredly pans his eyes up to Lorenz’s stern face. Lorenz is gazing at him with that controlled, almost cold look in his eyes. But he seems disappointed.

Lorenz unties his hands. He patiently waits for Paul to sluggishly stand again.

“Don’t fix your robe,” Lorenz says, “No use to get it bloody. Let us return to your room, and I shall tend to your wounds.”

Paul nods silently, gradually catching his breath. His skin is thrumming. Feeling is returning in his back. It burns. Lorenz turns to the others.

“You are free to retire.”

Paul watches his fellow priests nod—he takes notice of how reluctantly Till seems to leave. He stands there a moment longer than the others, watching them, and then departs.

**Author's Note:**

> babypaulchen.tumblr.com


End file.
